The Queen's Counsel
by Cardboard Edward
Summary: On a quiet summer night, Thrasher seeks advice and a little cheering up from Clarabelle. Onesided Thrashgrace, oneshot.


I love these three. I would love a spinoff for them- or even just some more fic! Enjoy.

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><p>Thrasher is overwhelming, miserably, desperately jealous. The painful kind, the one that crawls into his chest and moves his useless organs around to sit there and stew.<p>

He hasn't been this jealous since 10th grade, when his best friend and first proper crush got a girlfriend, and left him alone. They were still friends, of course, but there was no way someone as chronically shy as he could say, "please stop kissing your girlfriend in front of me. I am gay and madly in love with you."

Knowing how he was in school, he'd probably phrase it like that, too.

Eventually, he fell out of love, they broke up- he wasn't sure what happened first, but things faded, and the jealousy fell away. Growing up was supposed to fix it. It didn't. His heart still ached when Master smiled at _her_, or as close as a smile as he could manage.

Thrasher sighs, resting his soft jaw in his hand and glancing out across the town from the balcony. It's pretty in Roarhaven; but only at night, when lights scattered across the skyline are the only things visible. He can see Clarabelle's house- she had nestled tiny lanterns into the tree, and had a blow up Snowman and Santa in her yard, despite it being the middle of June. (He didn't really want to think about the blue haired young woman or her quirks right now.)

Hidden were the dead trees, broken down buildings, and hostile mages turning up their noises at him. In the dark, Roarhaven could almost be _home_.

Home. He's almost as homesick as he was jealous. Thrasher misses the scattered leaves and softly quacking ducklings of Phoenix park, his shabby but comfortable classroom shared with his honor students, and most of all, his mother. He had been missing for nine months. He'd been reported dead by the police by now.

It was all over, for him. They had moved on. His students had other teachers, his mother had other sons.

He still had the ducks, at least.

It might have been his scattered thoughts, or simply the unnaturally silent sound of her foot steps, but he didn't notice Clarabelle had joined him on the balcony until her nose was nearly poking his cheek.

"You don't smell half as bad as he does," she says.

"Really?" Thrasher says, giving a forced, tiny laugh and leaning back in his chair, pushing away images of her face close to Scapegrace's.

She settles herself down in the plastic lawn chair chair opposite him, smoothing her cream prairie skirt into soft creases, letting it settle around her calves.

"Are you sad because you're a zombie?"

He hesitates, brow creased. "Sorta." He scratches his ear, looks anywhere but her unblinking hazel eyes. "I miss… breathing." She holds her breath for a moment, as if worried she might offend him. "And I miss my mum, and my school."

"You were a teacher?"

"History."

"I like history. Did you teach the magicy stuff? All the wars and old wizards?"

"Just the regular ones." Quite well, at that. He did war recreations on weekends.

"I don't know much about those. I grew up in a magic family, I never went to 'regular' school. Maybe you could teach me, and I could tell you about the other wars. Like the ones Vaurien told me he fought in."

Thrasher nods, suddenly too glum to speak, and studies at his hands. They had a sickish grey tint, and his veins looked odd, but they weren't exactly zombie hands. He failed at even that.

"You don't like me very much, do you?" asks Clarabelle softly. He stares at her shoes- they were little boys' light up trainers. He had always wanted a pair.

"Is it because I need to breathe?" She asks, voice uncertain.

"It's not that," he says, shaking his head, glancing at her quickly. "It's just…" his voice dies, matching the rest of him. "I…" He squeezes his eyes shut. She was wrong about him needing a brain.

What he really needed was courage.

Burning much redder than someone with a limited amount of blood should, he started to speak. "Do you… um, like Scapegrace, Clarabelle?"

"Like?" She cocks her head, and a small river falls down her shoulder. She twists the ends of it, winds it around her finger.

It was the question that had bothered him since they met, that had caused him to glare and yell at the girl when Sir had first approached her.

"I mean…" How did kids say it these days? Fancy? No, that sounded old. "Do you… _like_ like him?"

There's a moment of silence, and Thrasher can almost hear his dead heart pound. A wind darts between them, chasing shadows around the small balcony.

She blinks, eyelashes almost white blonde. He wondered if she was ever going to dye them to match. "No."

He shifts in his seat, feeling a strange mix of relief and anxiety. Just _no_? "…Not at all?"

"Nope. He's nice…. well, not really, but he tries to be. And he's my friend, but he's not…" she wiggles her fingers.

"…Do you think he wants to be…" he imitates her finger waggle, "with you?"

"Maybe." She breathes out the word. "But I don't think so. He already has a queen."

Thrasher blushes again. "We're not…"

She poses serenely, legs crossed and chin raised, a blue haired goddess. Her gaze is too wide and open, though. Too curious in the lives of mortals. (Or was he immortal now…?) She nods, as if giving him permission to say what he feels.

He looks at his knees, squeezes his eyes shut, and blurts out the words. "But I want to be." He runs his hands over his aged face, breathes out. "I have since I met, and I think he knows… But he hates me, and—"

"Wait." Clarabelle says, and holds up a hand to indicate she still wants to listen. She plucks a bag off the ground, cow spotted and over-sized, and digs through it intently. He watches her as she pulls out a small container of white out.

"It'll have to do," she says, and shuffles over to him, sitting on the ground before his chair. She grabs his right hand and begins painting his nails with the white out brush.

"Like a sleepover!" She beams up at him. "Keep going."

He finds himself smiling without having to force it. He hadn't had a real sleepover in years.

Or a friend.

Sliding off the chair to sit across from her, knee to knee, he begins with, "I thought the devotion and adoration was just a zombie thing, at first…"


End file.
